The Wolf

by Jean Johnson

  Rubbing her fingertips together where her hands rested demurely in her lap, seated on a rock that had been placed there by other campers using this road over the years, Alys murmured as quietly as she could under her breath. This was not her best form of magic, nor one she had been able to practice often enough to make it easy, since she had been forced to conceal the extent of her powers from her uncle early on. He thought she had only enough to renew the shield-caging for his beasts and a little to protect herself long enough to feed them, when a servant terrorized into doing it would more likely be devoured along with the first butchered bucketful of meat.

  Feeding them was one way of keeping her terrified of his anger and retribution, to his mind; if she barely had the power to protect herself from them, she surely didn’t have the power to protect herself from him. The deception had worked, too. Alys had never been particularly brave to begin with; she had been gentle, like her father and her mother. There was no urge within her to compete with others, to boast and brag about her abilities.

  Of course, playing with the Corvis sons had taught her how to steel her nerve and join them on their more exciting adventures: climbing trees, using sticks in mock sword fights, pretending they were great mages when they were little, and mock-battles filled with the young heroes—and heroine—defeating vast, imagined armies of the same beasts she had later been forced to help her uncle keep. Living under his cruel fist, she had learned how to shut away her fear and do whatever she had to, to think through and past her fear, and present an undisturbed, obedient face to the world.

  With her heart pounding in her ears, she finished the long, whispered chant and looked around. The men near the fire were still gambling. She couldn’t see the ones who were beyond the firelight, watching the darkness, but she doubted they were all that alert, either. Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, Alys picked up the small eating knife she had used in her meal. Wiping it discreetly on the skirt of her gown to make certain it was at least somewhat clean, Alys nicked her arm and released the spell in a single, barely muttered word.

  “Pookrah.”

  Beasts burst through the trees. Two savaged the guards on watch, as the startled men drew their swords. Several more guards fought to keep the other beasts at bay. The biggest one lunged straight at Alys, who shot to her feet with a scream, the very image of a terrified maid.

  It leaped, grabbed her by the throat in its huge, sharp teeth, and shook her body. Blood flung in red drops, and the horse-sized pookrah lunged back into the trees with its prize bouncing all the way, her limp, dangling body still locked in its jaws. A bloodcurdling howl, and the others escaped as well, leaving the bloodied but still-living soldiers behind to gather their wits.

  The whole attack had taken less than eight seconds.

  The leader of the guards, a mage as well as a warrior, cast lightning bolts into the trees. The counterattack seared bark and leaves, but the wild beasts were gone, and most of his fellows were too injured to give instant chase. Their master would not be pleased . . . but Lord Broger of all people, Alys had known, would understand that recovering his niece was now impossible. Once a pookrah picked a meal for its pack, that meal would be gone long before they could ever catch up with the swift beasts.

  The voracious carnivores had been spell-changed from wolves into giant wardogs for some long ago mage-war. There weren’t many of them running around loose, but there were a few small packs that still roamed the mountains just to the north. Alys’ uncle would be slightly more upset by his guards’ inability to capture more beasts for breeding in his menagerie than he would be at her loss. Though he would also be upset at the loss of land and wealth he had almost gained from her sale.

  Arm stinging, still bleeding from the cut she had given it, though it was now shaped like an oversized canine leg, Alys loped in pookrah form through the night. Her best magic lay toward the arts of shapechanging, animal taming, and magical-beast tending; she had long ago planned this form of escape, one among several possibilities that depended on timing and circumstance. In daylight in the woods around the castle, at night on the road to somewhere; it mattered not. She was halfway free. Now she ran hard and fast to evade any possible pursuit.

  Scenting rocks with the keen nose of a pookrah, Alys headed that way. Once she leaped up among the rocky scree on the slope, she slowly altered her doggish, cattle-sized feet, shrinking in size to something more natural. She didn’t stop until after she had mounted the hill and crossed over to the other side. Only then did she feel safe enough to stop.

  Panting, Alys reshaped herself and sat on one of the boulders near the top of the spilled pile. It tilted a little under her weight, then steadied. She fumbled the silk pouch out of her bodice, her eyes still shaped to pierce the night’s darkness. Shaking out the pendant, she quickly stuck it to her sternum, just below her throat and pressed the four-point star against her skin.

  A sting of heat ripped through her whole body; it made her eyes water and her breath hiss through her teeth . . . but the pendant bonded to her flesh. There was no magic for countering so many spells laid on her that could sever them painlessly . . . though Morg had done his best to find a counter for each and every one of her uncle’s spells. It had taken nearly two years of work, with her carefully hunting down and puzzling out the spells her uncle had laid upon her and reporting them to her friend through their intermittent, unpredictable chances at contact. The pain was worth the price, though it made her eyes water and her jaw ache against the tightly clenched urge to scream.

  She smelled her own burning flesh, then burning bone, and finally, the tingling cold that cooled the diamond of silver and healed the blackening and blistering of her skin around its edges. Cooled, the amulet sank into her sternum with a tingle of more magic, resting so that it was flush with her skin. The cooling sensation spread through her veins, traveling in her blood until it tingled from scalp to toes and made her tears seem hot on cheeks that felt as cold as death for just a few moments.

  The diamond-shaped metal slowly warmed back up to body temperature. It was finally done. Alys shivered, feeling warmth coming back into her body, spreading out gently from the amulet that was now forever a part of her.

  Now Uncle thinks I am truly dead; all of his spells binding me to his knowledge, to his knowing my whereabouts through his damnable kin-tie to me, are severed as surely as if I were dead. All I have to do is make sure no one ever carves this from my chest.

  Alys rubbed the bit of silver centered between her collarbone and breasts. The pain had faded enough to let her know her arm still stung. It had been necessary to spill her own blood by the campfire, both to enforce the illusion and make her snatching and death look real. Some of it still dripped now over these stones, but it was no longer necessary. Certainly it ached and stung, and she had never liked pain of any kind.

  “Sukra medis esthanor; coajis epi demisor,” she murmured and watched the wound close over and seal itself scarlessly. There wasn’t much in the way of color to her night-shaped vision, but she could see details. Peeling off the lightweight, muslin over-gown, Alys scrubbed her arm to get off the remaining blood, then tore the garment and tossed it down the slope, just in case her uncle’s soldiers actually tried coming this far to look for her. They wouldn’t waste time searching farther, looking for her body, if they came far enough to see that.

  Resting only a little bit longer, Alys finally sighed and shifted her shape to that of an owl and launched herself from the stones. Both moons were in the sky, giving her owl-shaped eyes more than enough light to see her way. Sister Moon hung low on the western horizon, just a small sliver of light, but the larger face of Brother Moon was nearly full, rising in the east. The guards would be able to see her spell-shaped tracks for a little while. But she couldn’t be certain how thoroughly they would track her down.

  It didn’t take long to retrace her path from the air. Diving down and settling on a branch within view of the campsite, she watched the men tend to the wounds caused b
y the complex illusion she had conjured. Some of the less-injured ones were examining the paw prints each illusive pookrah had left on the ground. Their leader was examining the blood she had spilled.

  “Should we go after her?” one of the guards asked his commander, eyeing the huge dents in the summer-dry soil.

  “No, she is dead.” The leader of the group held up a pendant, a silver-clasped sphere of glass. The sphere had blackened, and that made Alys very, very glad—solid proof that the painful severing spells in her breastbone amulet had worked. “This would have led us right to her; it does not flash anymore when I activate it. Therefore, the wench is dead.

  “I do not look forward to informing our lord of what has happened.”

  No, he won’t be happy at all—lost his barter-bride, lost his wealth, supplies, and land, lost it all because I have managed to escape!—Alys cut off her gloating before it could emerge as a triumphant hoot. She couldn’t allow them to see her; a shapeshifting mage could change shape, but not general coloring, and her dark blond hair would remain a golden, light-tan color as feathers, scales, or fur, and her gray eyes would be gray eyes always, whether bulging on eyestalks or slitted like a cat’s. Not without applying the kind of illusion-spell that would glow like a lantern to mage-sight.

  There was nothing more to keep her there. Alys had the information she wanted, that the pendant under the feathers covering her breastbone had indeed worked. Silently, she launched herself from the limb, oriented herself on the stars, and headed to the east. First she would fly a few hours to get well out of range, then she would find some secure place to sleep until dawn. She had a very long way to go, to get to the eastern coast.

  Wolfer paced the ramparts, eyes fixed on the east and the rippling waves of the Eastern Ocean in the distance. Somewhere out there was his next youngest brother, Dominor. He had been kidnapped by the woman-hating, magicless Mandarites, because Dom was a powerful mage. Dominor had yet to respond to his Evanor’s calls to him through the magic aether of their world, and his other brothers suspected foul play.

  Four days had passed. Four days of no word, four days of impatience, waiting to see if Dominor escaped from the Mandarites’ ship somehow, four days of praying to Jinga and Kata that Evanor didn’t have to tell them through the link the four sets of twins had that Evanor’s twin was dead. Wolfer caught himself growling, caught himself imagining shifting his shape and tearing that treacherous Lord Aragol’s throat out with claw and fang, and fingered the braided bracelet on his wrist.

  Some people are good people, he reminded himself, lightly rubbing the braided hairs with their grain. Gently, though the giver, the owner of that hair had painstakingly woven it in front of him with a spell to never loosen or fray. As he usually did when he calmed himself through her braid, he pictured young Alys of Devries, daughter of one of the freeholders near Corvis lands, before she had moved away with her uncle. His uncle, too, by marriage, though something about the man had always raised his hackles and flattened his ears, inside.

  He tried imagining her as, what, twenty-four by now? He was twenty-nine, and she was five years younger than him and his twin, Saber. Probably married with kids clinging to her skirts. A good mother, he reminded himself. The thought of her married to anyone wouldn’t settle in his mind, though. It was hard for him to think of her married to anybody. Not Alys. She’d kick the man between the legs . . . or perhaps she would just run the other way . . .

  It was the dichotomy between those two reactions that had first puzzled, then irritated, then intrigued him. His Alys had grown progressively bolder, too . . . until she had turned fourteen and a flood had swept her parents away. Her boldness disappeared, after that. Her shyness had become blandness. Her frequent visits turned infrequent, and usually only at her uncle Broger’s whim; the man only came to borrow money from Saber, since he had married their mother’s sister, Sylvia, providing a tenuous link of kinship-by-marriage between them. Alys was . . . Broger’s younger brother’s daughter, Wolfer recalled, concentrating on his memories of her, because it was more soothing than thinking about Dominor.

  A moan wafted faintly through the air. Followed shortly by a shout. Wolfer suppressed a groan, rubbing at his temple. His twin was still honeymooning with his wife, which meant they were making noises like that at any time the mood struck them. At least they have something to take their minds off the agony and anger of waiting and wondering . . . though I could wish they weren’t so gods-be vocal about it . . .

  “Wolfer. Do you see anything?” Trevan asked, joining him on the outer wall between his and their brother Morganen’s easternmost tower.

  Wolfer shook his head. “No. And don’t you try flying after them. You need to wait a couple weeks more, until your blood rebalances itself and your stamina returns.”

  “Maybe, but by then, they’ll be too far away,” his younger brother muttered bitterly, rubbing at his scarlessly healed but still sore chest. The bullet-thing had struck near his shoulder, narrowly missing anything important like a lung or a major artery or vein . . . but he needed the muscles and tendons in that area to be healed and whole before he could take to the air for any length of time. He eyed Wolfer, his green eyes meeting a glance of Wolfer’s golden ones. “Have you been practicing your own bird forms?”

  Wolfer shrugged. “I hit my head in a fall of three lousy yards, yesterday. Kelly scolded me so hard for hurting myself, she made my ears ring even worse than the blow to my head did.”

  That made Trevan chuckle. “Poor Saber. Wed to a red-headed virago,” the other man mock-commiserated. “If only that had been the true Disaster, and not the Mandarites kidnapping Dom.”

  Wolfer nodded, his own chest-length brown hair sliding over his shoulders, a few wisps floating in the rampart breeze. He caressed the bracelet braided around his wrist once more and wondered—not for the first time—what had happened to his little Alys, the source of his gift.

  TWO

  I’m going to have to truth-spell you, young lady, if you want me to purchase this jewelry from you,” the goldsmith apologized, eyeing the cloaked woman in front of him warily.

  “You may. They are mine, rightfully by law to keep or to sell,” she added in ritual, as he pulled out a rune-carved length of metal from behind his counter and touched her with it. The crystal glowing at the end of the copper shaft where it touched her wrist remained clear and bright through the whole of her claim.

  “So they are,” the man murmured, tucking the wand away. He frowned slightly at her. “What sort of trouble could you be in, that you would give so much of it away?”

  “I have to get to a friend who is in trouble, to help him,” Alys stated truthfully. “I need to be able to afford a Gating to get there in time; he lives on the far side of Katan from here.”

  “That is an expensive enough need to drive you to my door. But I cannot give you overmuch for this small amount of jewelry—some silver, some moonstones, gold with some amethysts . . . none of it magical, I think, which reduces the value. Twenty gilder.”

  Alys calculated, her face half-shrouded under the curve of her cloak’s hood. At least it had been raining earlier, allowing her to use the cloak as a disguise. She wanted no one seeing her face clearly enough to ever have word of her still being alive getting back to her uncle. “Twenty-two.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ll need to hire transportation when I reach the far end of the Gate,” she wheedled. “My friend does not live in town.”

  “Twenty-one, then—but nothing more,” he warned her.

  “Thank you, then; I think that will be enough.”

  Nodding, he pulled the jewelry she had set on the counter to his side of the polished wood and pulled out a box. Counting out twenty-one gold coins, he handed them over and shook her hand. “May you reach your friend in time to help him, and may he know the true value of your friendship.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” Alys prayed, taking her coins and escaping.

  The Mages’ Guild wasn�
��t far away. Ignoring the smell of meat pies from a nearby bakery, the hunger in her stomach, she hurried up the steps and ducked inside, sash pouch gripped tightly in her fist. The clerk at the greeting desk eyed her cloaked figure as she approached.

  “Can the Guild help you, miss?”

  “I need to Gate to . . . Orovalis City, on the northeast coastline.” That was a place just to the north of Nightfall Isle; once she entered the ocean water in a swimming form, the north-to-south current would help sweep her to its shores.

  “Orovalis?” the man asked, arching a brow. “That is a long way away.”

  “I’m in a hurry to help a friend, and I need to get there today.”

  “You’ll need to go to the Gating desk—go up those stairs over there, turn right, and enter the third door on the left,” he ordered her.

  Nodding, Alys hurried in the direction he had pointed. The woman at the Gating desk heard Alys’ request, opened her book, and checked the list of names and destinations waiting to be Gated, while those waiting to be called sat or paced in the largish room around them.

  “You are in luck; there is someone going to Orovalis today—right now, in fact—” The woman tapped the edge of a mirror angled on her desk and spoke. “Roether, please hold the Gate.”

  “Acknowledged,” a voice wafted back from the linked mirror.

  “That will be fifteen gilder, since the Gate is already opened, but you have to pay right now, or pay the full twenty for that length of destination later.”